Art-Study-Action: Developing Methods of Opinion Formation with Cultural Organisations

SPACEX1[16]

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My research activity originates from my artistic practice. I work as part of the Partisan Social Club to develop participatory works and co-learning initiatives. We create temporary public spheres in the art gallery, which use the production of artworks to engage citizens. Membership, shared study, tagging and publishing together are used as methods to produce new values and opinions (Hewitt & Jordan: 2020).

I am Principal Investigator on the Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic Exchange (SPACEX), EU funded RISE Project. It is a research action that brings together cultural organisations and higher education institutes to explore how spatial practices effect public exchange and opinion formation in urban spaces. The aim is to understand the role that visual culture plays in promoting democratic ways of living together. Research questions addressed are, how do the pedagogic strategies employed by spatial practices effect and contribute to the transformation and construction of subjectivity? How can spatial practices impact upon cultural and social policy to promote inclusionary processes? The short film, Collective Nouns II (Reflections on Commoning), was produced whilst on a research secondment at Sirius as part of the SPACEX project.

References: Hewitt, Andrew and Jordan, Mel (2020), ‘On trying to be collective’, Art & the
Public Sphere, 9:1&2, pp. 63–84, doi: https://doi.org/10.1386/aps_00033_1

Andrew Hewitt, andrew.hewitt@northampton.ac.uk & Melanie Jordan (Coventry University)